Summary: We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint about the way the Council has handled his involvement with its services. Further investigation would not add to the Council’s response or lead to a different result.

The complaint

1. Mr B complains about the Council’s:

• handling of his care and support;
• decision to exclude him from an event for people with learning disabilities because it said it was not relevant to him;
• handling of alleged data breaches; and
• complaint handling.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

2. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word fault to refer to these. We provide a free service but must use public money carefully.
3. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if:
• we are satisfied with the actions an organisation has taken or proposes to take and
• further investigation would not lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(7) and 24A(6), as amended)

4. The Local Government Act 1974 sets out our powers but also imposes limits on what we can investigate.
5. We cannot investigate late complaints unless we decide there are good reasons. Late complaints are when someone takes more than 12 months to complain to us about something a council has done. (Local Government Act 1974, section 26B, as amended)
6. We normally expect someone to refer the matter to the Information Commissioner if they have a complaint about data protection. (Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

7. I considered information provided by the complainant and the Council.
8. I considered the Ombudsman’s Assessment Code.

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My assessment

9. Mr B is autistic, says he has a diagnosis of anxiety and considers he has a learning disability. The Council has assessed Mr B’s need for care and support at a ‘low’ level. Under national criteria this means it has no duty to provide services to meet those needs. Mr B is also part of a peer advocacy group and has taken part in a Council partnership board.
10. The Council appointed an independent Investigating Officer (IO) to complete a review of its handling of Mr B’s social care and other matters. The IO met with Mr B to take details of his complaints about the Council and Mr B provided copies of correspondence. Mr B’s agreed statement of complaint included 11 issues and the IO examined Mr B’s correspondence and case records from June 2016 to August 2022.
11. The IO produced a detailed report and upheld or partly upheld two complaints, did not uphold seven complaints, and could not decide on two complaints.
12. In particular the IO:
• partly upheld one point of complaint about the Council’s records of how it intended in 2019 to handle Mr B’s allegations of verbal assault by council staff;
• did not uphold other complaints about council support to Mr B;
• did not uphold Mr B’s complaint about taking part in a council event in 2022; and
• did not uphold the complaint about an alleged data breach arising from correspondence with a national advocacy organisation.
13. The Council accepted the findings of the IO report and completed the recommendations they made. This included apologising to Mr B, working with him to reassess his care and support needs, and agreeing communication methods that meet his needs.
14. Mr B wants us to reinvestigate issues the IO has already considered. He believes the IO did not give him chance to send further evidence to support his concerns about the Council.
15. I recognise Mr B believes him providing more information to any investigation might lead to a different result and the outcome he would like. However:
• The IO report is thorough and detailed and it is unlikely on balance of probability any information would lead to a significantly different result.
• Many of the events in Mr B’s complaints happened two years ago or more, so his complaints about them are late. I recognise he may have found it more difficult than other people to come to the Ombudsman, but he had access to commissioned and informal support to do so if he had wanted. I am satisfied there is no good reason he could not have complained to us before now, and therefore no good reason for us to accept his complaints about what happened originally.
• Even if there was, the events are now so old we could not investigate them effectively or provide more than the Council has already agreed to do, so the matter would not warrant investigation anyway.
16. I am therefore satisfied we do not need to investigate the Council’s handling of
    Mr B’s complaints or the IO’s actions or report.
17. Mr B may wish to complain further about the Council wrongly disclosing information about him to another organisation with which he had already been in contact, despite the findings of the IO report. If so, it is open to him to approach the Information Commissioner’s Office. It is their role not that of the Ombudsman to handle complaints about data protection.

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Final decision

18. We will not investigate Mr B’s complaint because we could not add to the Council’s previous investigation or achieve a different outcome.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman